Is there still a stripped down distribution, based on debian, which keeps
the kernel and security packages updated while remaining a version behind,
or while stripping the bells and whistles?

A few weeks back I tried upgrading an old Pentium-3 800 machine that I use
as a server from debian 9 to 10 "Buster." I had to downgrade it back due
to issues with it grinding the system to a halt, and that is without even installing an x-server. :)

I was hoping there might still be some debian-based "lighter weight"
distros out there. The ones I remember from a few years back have ceased
being maintained.

Thanks!

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Re: Stripped down Debian dist
By: Dumas Walker to ALL on Sat Aug 17 2019 07:41 pm

Is there still a stripped down distribution, based on debian, which keeps the kernel and security packages updated while remaining a version behind, or while stripping the bells and whistles?

I have been far from the Debian universe for a while, so I am not sure how the status is right now, but back in the day you could just install a minimum system using the main official installer and then install whatever you wanted on top of it. Netinstalls were very popular because they allowed for the same thing too: you installed the basics first, then added only the necessary components you wanted after the fact.

If that does not work for you, I would just switch distribution rather than try to find a Debian derivative, mainly because I don't think close Debian derivatives can be made more lightweight than a pure Debian you have manually stripped off. Alpine Linux seems to be a common choice for barebones systems. You may also try other Unix operating systems. NetBSD can probably be made into a very lightweight install. Same with OpenBSD if you are careful.

That said, keep in mind that what usually trashes system resources are the applications you are runnig. Oftentimes the problem is that a modern up-to-date browser or office suite you MUST use wants to eat more RAM than you have. You are not fixing that by switching distributions or operating systems.

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Re: Stripped down Debian dist
By: Dumas Walker to ALL on Sat Aug 17 2019 19:41:00

I was hoping there might still be some debian-based "lighter weight" distros out there. The ones I remember from a few years back have ce being maintained.

You could look into antiX, they're in the process of putting together a
release based around buster with betas currently available. Their FAQ page states that it's possible to run it on a PII system, but not to expect miracles.

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Dumas Walker wrote to ALL <=-

Is there still a stripped down distribution, based on debian,
which keeps the kernel and security packages updated while
remaining a version behind, or while stripping the bells and
whistles?

A few weeks back I tried upgrading an old Pentium-3 800 machine
that I use as a server from debian 9 to 10 "Buster." I had to
downgrade it back due to issues with it grinding the system to a
halt, and that is without even installing an x-server. :)

I was hoping there might still be some debian-based "lighter
weight" distros out there. The ones I remember from a few years
back have ceased being maintained.

You might give antiX a try, it says it's a lightweight Deb variant
and specifically mentions running on P3's:

https://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=antix


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That said, keep in mind that what usually trashes system resources are the appl
cations you are runnig. Oftentimes the problem is that a modern up-to-date brow
er or office suite you MUST use wants to eat more RAM than you have. You are no
fixing that by switching distributions or operating systems.

Thanks. This is a server with no X or X apps running. The base debian
install apparently did install some stuff I thought it should not have,
like pulseaudio, since the machine has no soundcard. I believe the issue
was multiple processes running amok but I was not able to even get logged
on to see what was going on... the processes had it really tied up. I made that assumption based on the error messages that were showing up.

That was with 10. On Debian 9, I have plenty of RAM and CPU available. <shrugs>

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You could look into antiX, they're in the process of putting together a release based around buster with betas currently available. Their FAQ page states that it's possible to run it on a PII system, but not to expect miracles.

Thanks, I may look at it.

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On 08-18-19 06:39, Arelor wrote to All <=-

That said, keep in mind that what usually trashes system resources are
the applications you are runnig. Oftentimes the problem is that a
modern up-to-date browser or office suite you MUST use wants to eat
more RAM than you have. You are not fixing that by switching
distributions or operating systems.

Yeah, I've seen this on Lubuntu. If I load up Thunderbird or Firefox, the machine slows to a crawl, but if I use lightweight software like SynTerm and Multimail, it runs really well. Makes a nice BBS terminal machine. :)


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Re: Re: Stripped down Debian dist
By: Vk3jed to Arelor on Mon Aug 19 2019 06:43 pm

Yeah, I've seen this on Lubuntu. If I load up Thunderbird or Firefox, the machine slows to a crawl, but if I use lightweight software like SynTerm and Multimail, it runs really well. Makes a nice BBS terminal machine. :)

Prety much a similar experience here. I have an old Pentium with 192M of RAM here. It would work ok with OpenBSD. If you tried to load Firefox it would start swapping like crazy.

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On 08-19-19 05:20, Arelor wrote to All <=-

Prety much a similar experience here. I have an old Pentium with 192M
of RAM here. It would work ok with OpenBSD. If you tried to load
Firefox it would start swapping like crazy.

Yep. Something like Puffin, where cloud based servers do the heavy lifting, would be a good browser for these minimal systems, but unfortunately, it's not available for most flavours of Linux.


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Re: Re: Stripped down Debian dist
By: Gamgee to Dumas Walker on Sun Aug 18 2019 09:18 am

Is there still a stripped down distribution, based on debian,
which keeps the kernel and security packages updated while
remaining a version behind, or while stripping the bells and
A few weeks back I tried upgrading an old Pentium-3 800 machine
that I use as a server from debian 9 to 10 "Buster." I had to downgrade it back due to issues with it grinding the system to a
halt, and that is without even installing an x-server. :)

Yes, going from Jessie to Buster you're going to really have to read up the docs for that to watch out for snafus, but once you're there it's all good.

Jessie is still actively supported, however, and you should be good for quite some time, considering you're running 'stable' in the first place.

You can always pick and choose packages you wish to update, with the usual provisos like deps and such.

I was hoping there might still be some debian-based "lighter
weight" distros out there. The ones I remember from a few years
back have ceased being maintained.

You might give antiX a try, it says it's a lightweight Deb variant
and specifically mentions running on P3's:

I don't think this will actually fit your requirements for what you consider as , "lighter weight", but it's pretty light weight if you want a GUI, so you could consider LMDE. It's based on the Debian-testing (currently Bullseye) version of Debian, instead of ewboontu, and available at https://linuxmint.com/download_lmde.php

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